


Sex Friends

by doingthemost



Series: Dappled with the flickers of light [2]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Character Study, Exes, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Snow, let's pretend time and seasons and calendars aren't a things, sex is talked about and alluded to but is not covered in detail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28342320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doingthemost/pseuds/doingthemost
Summary: It's nice, to have someone she doesn't expect something from. It rewrites a little bit of her self-identity, the fact that she can be this woman with asex friend,and she's surprised to learn that she feels lighter this way. She can do whatever or whoever the fuck she wants now that she isn't waiting for something that will never happen.This isn't about Rachel getting over Patrick; it's about Rachel getting into herself, with the help of her sex friend named Jake.
Relationships: Jake (Schitt's Creek)/Rachel (Schitt's Creek), Patrick Brewer & Rachel, Patrick Brewer/David Rose (background) - Relationship, Rachel & Rachel
Series: Dappled with the flickers of light [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101032
Comments: 42
Kudos: 68





	Sex Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yourbuttervoicedbeau (kiwiana)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwiana/gifts).



> yourbuttervoicedbeau prompted me with "snowed in" on tumblr! this fic is loosely sent in the same world as their wonderful fic [I haven't met the new me yet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040115). Reading that before reading this fic is not required, but it's highly recommended!! 
> 
> thank you to singsongsung for the spontaneous beta!

It isn't supposed to be a two-time thing.

What's supposed to happen is this: Rachel goes back to the motel the next day, and she and Jake don't exchange phone numbers before she gets out of his truck. She drives home, and doesn't think about Jake inside her, on top of her, underneath her. She definitely doesn't think about Patrick's face at the barbecue, either, or how he'd chased after someone else instead of her.

She does go back to the motel, and she does drive home. That's where the similarities end.

 _What's supposed to happen_ has haunted Rachel her whole life. She was supposed to graduate at the top of her class, so she did. She was supposed to fall in love with her best friend, so she did. They were supposed to get engaged, so she said yes when he asked.

And Patrick is supposed to love her. He's supposed to treat her well. He's supposed to talk to her when things go wrong, to treat her like the best friend he used to see her as. He's supposed to be who she comes home to at the end of her days, and who she wakes up to at the beginnings.

She was supposed to be smart enough to see the warning signs. She was supposed to stand up for herself when he didn't hold up his end of the bargain, to have more empathy for herself than to cling to the idea of who they're supposed to be together. But her whole life, her whole _identity_ has been planned out for her, and now that it's falling apart, she's reaching for any handhold she can find.

After years of checking off milestones and achievements like she was a plastic piece in a little toy car, playing _The Game of Life_ , her life's stalled out before the finish line leading into the Rest of Her Adulthood.

So what is she supposed to do now?

That first night back home in Belleville, she orders a whole pizza and a tray of garlic bread just for her. Instead of Patrick's favourite toppings – pepperoni and olives – she chooses bacon, mushrooms, and parmesan. She eats half of it over a deluge of reality TV, the volume turned up higher than Patrick likes to keep it, and licks her fingers instead of wiping them on a cloth napkin. She stays up later than Patrick liked to go to bed, plays Britney Spears and dances in her underwear as she tidies up, and when she picks her phone back up, there are two new messages on her lockscreen.

  


* * *

  


Patrick  
  
I'm so sorry.  
  
Can we talk soon?  
  


Jake  
  
Glad you got back okay  
  
I meant it when I said look me up next time you're in town  
  


  


* * *

  


The next day, she listens to Patrick explain himself through halting sentences and a tightness in his throat, the phone pressed against her ear like when they were kids, tying up the lines and staying up late together. And once enough time has passed and she feels like she's almost ready for it, she ends up driving back to Schitt's Creek. They meet over soda and some questionable hot dogs next to bright wallpaper, and Patrick looks at his mozzarella sticks with a strange sort of fondness before he offers her one.

"Is the waitress watching us?" she asks Patrick, and he laughs.

"Probably. This town is..." He rubs at the back of his neck, and she bites back the urge to do it for him. That's not who they are anymore. "I guess you could say everyone's very invested in each other."

She'd felt claustrophobic enough at home, with both sets of parents and all of their friends and extended family asking about their relationship. Rachel tries to picture an entire _town_ doing the same thing, and she shudders. She likes the anonymity of where she is, but as she watches people drift in and out of the café, all of them calling out a _hello_ in Patrick's direction, she notices the lightness in his smile and the enthusiasm in his wave. People know him here – the real him.

She exhales, pushes aside the twinge in her heart, and smiles. "This place is good for you, Patrick."

His pale eyebrows lift. She can read the worry in his face and the way he's holding himself together. "It is," he says, tentatively, like she'll snap at the wrong thing.

She reaches out to tap her thumb against his hand, then sets hers down on the table between them. "I'm happy for you."

"Thank you." He flexes his index finger, brushing it against her skin. It's the closest they'll ever get to the closeness they used to have, but she thinks she can get used to it one day. "Are you gonna be okay?"

Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she fishes it out in case it's an emergency. But it's just Jake: _Back from deliveries, come by any time you want_.

"Yeah," she says, and sets the phone face-down on the booth next to her. It doesn't feel like a lie when she adds, "I will be."

  


* * *

  


It's a huge, staggering relief when she realizes that she doesn't want Jake to be her boyfriend. She doesn't want him to meet her parents, or her friends, and she doesn't want to unfold her secrets for his safekeeping. She doesn't want to take him apart and understand what makes him work, and she doesn't need him to figure her out.

It's not that they don't talk to each other when they aren't fucking – which is what it is. (It's certainly not _making love_ , and _having sex_ feels too clinical a way to refer to what they do.) And they don't sit in silence beforehand or afterward, and she doesn't gather up her clothing and dash out. She tells him little anecdotes that remind her of him, and he explains how he got into woodworking. They figure out that they watch a couple of the same TV shows and listen to some of the same bands, and they trade recommendations as they rehydrate.

Sometimes she sleeps over, and he keeps a respectful distance between them in his bed. Sometimes she leaves after, and he kisses her goodbye after he's walked her out to her car. She thinks about him when she's in Belleville, but it isn't the desperate sort of longing she used to have with Patrick. Jake's her friend, her _sex friend_ , and that's all they are to each other.

And it's nice, to have someone she doesn't expect something from. It rewrites a little bit of her self-identity, the fact that she can be this woman with a _sex friend_ , and she's surprised to learn that she feels lighter this way. She can do whatever or whoever the fuck she wants now that she isn't waiting for something that will never happen.

It's really nice.

  


* * *

  


The forecast hadn't called for snow, but by the time she pulls off of Jake and collapses next to him, her fingers tracing patterns on his skin, it's really coming down.

He pushes himself up just enough to glance out the window, and his head tilts to one side as he looks back at her. "You can't go when it's like this."

"Oh, I'm sure it'll be fine." But once they've gotten up to look out the window, enough snow has fallen on top of and around her car for her to rethink her plans.

"It's a freak blizzard." Jake sets his phone back down with a shrug. He seems, as always, unbothered. "It's not supposed to end for a couple of days. You can stay here."

"Isn't that convenient," she mutters under her breath. She has work on Monday, three days from now. Her computer's at home. But Jake kisses her ear, then says something about making late-night sandwiches, and she guesses she can figure out work when she gets there.

  


* * *

  


When Saturday morning rolls around, Rachel goes down on him in the shower, and he sets her on the edge of the bathtub so he can return the favour.

But she can only have sex so many times in one day, and she's surprised by how easily they fill the rest of the time. Once they're out of the bathroom, she makes French toast for them and he teaches her how to play Super Smash Bros. Netflix is on when she's not attempting to become a gamer, and they make their own director's commentary as they check off movies from an invisible list.

The roads are plowed during the day, but the snowfall's heavy enough to make the maintenance efforts moot. She helps Jake shovel their cars out, but it's more of a preventative thing than the precursor to her leaving. She makes an angel in the pile of snow that results, and there are snowflakes in his eyelashes as he leans down to kiss her.

  


* * *

  


They trek into downtown Schitt's Creek on Sunday. She's surprised to see that Rose Apothecary's closed – she suspects it's David's doing, not Patrick's – but Café Tropical's still open. The waitress says something about how the ghost in her house gets crabby when it snows, and how it's much easier to just open up the restaurant than have to deal with him, but Jake seems to take it in stride.

"You really should get him out of there," he says, once the waitress – Twyla – has set his burger down in front of him. "I don't like him being so mean to you."

"That's just Glenn," Twyla says with an easy shrug. "He means it with love, I think."

"If you say so." Jake's about to say more, but then the door opens and David and Patrick walk in.

Twyla, who'd turned to greet the newcomers, seems to freeze in place, her eyes darting between both pairs, then manages a "Welcome in!"

Rachel knows what this looks like: her and Jake in a booth together, her in Schitt's Creek to begin with, without having told Patrick, her existence here in general. Patrick's stunned, still rooted in place near the entryway, but David's wearing a mix of glee, curiosity, and concern as he moves over to them.

"What have we here?" David asks, and Jake stands up. Rachel raises her eyebrows as Jake grasps David by the shoulders and leans in for a brief kiss.

"Hey, David," Jake says calmly, once he's drawn back. He moves over to Patrick, then kisses him, too.

"Does he always do that?" Rachel asks under her breath.

David nods, then waves his hand in a circle. "And speaking of _doing that_..." Patrick's moving closer to them now, his jaw tight. "Is that what's happening here?"

"Yeah," Jake says. "You guys wanna join us?"

"That's okay." Patrick looks between Rachel and Jake. "I think that'd be... We don't need to cross wires like that."

His voice is gruff, his shoulders taut, and for once, Rachel's first instinct isn't to apologize. She squares her own shoulders instead, and refuses to look away from Patrick's gaze. They're trying to be friends again, but if he can have his secrets, his own separate world that no longer includes her to such an extent as before, then so can she.

"I think Jake just meant joining us for lunch," Rachel says. "Does that change your answer?"

David seems to swallow a laugh, and he pats his boyfriend on the back as some of the tension seems to leave Patrick's shoulders. "We'd love to," he says, and Rachel switches onto Jake's side of the booth, pulling her food towards her, as David and Patrick take off their winter coats and sit down across from them.

It's weird, the four of them here together, but it's also... okay. She's been dreading this a little, the inevitable moment in which Patrick will realize she's moved on, but as their eyes meet across the table, she only sees a question: _Are you okay?_

She nods, biting back a smile. She'll tell him everything later, over the phone, once she's ready. Right now, she just wants to eat.

"So are you guys dating?" David asks, once he and Patrick have ordered from Twyla, and Rachel shakes her head.

"We're just sex friends," she says, glancing over at Jake, and he grins back at her, then taps his shoe against hers. She nudges him back with an elbow as the conversation continues on, and her smile blossoms across her face despite herself.

Yeah, she's okay.


End file.
